The busiest travel weekend of the year was an interesting test for Tesla's chargers

It's sort of interesting how quickly we've went from "no one's ever going to buy them electric cars. They don't make any sense!" to "Look at all these electric cars, there's just too many of them"

It's definitely a case where the infrastructures have not kept up with the increase in ownership in that area. Public holidays is one of the situations in which owners may have to alter their driving/ charging behaviors.

Tesla would do well to ensure that capacity is increased significantly by next year.
 
It's sort of interesting how quickly we've went from "no one's ever going to buy them electric cars. They don't make any sense!" to "Look at all these electric cars, there's just too many of them"

It's definitely a case where the infrastructures have not kept up with the increase in ownership in that area. Public holidays is one of the situations in which owners may have to alter their driving/ charging behaviors.

Tesla would do well to ensure that capacity is increased significantly by next year.

The issue with adding more charging stations is the same problem that parking lots face. They are a waste of space. If only most of North American wasn't so damn dead set against proper public transit.. Then again its easy when you have this boondoggle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail
 
At my wife's work they have 40 charging stations. By 8am they're all full... There is no etiquette though, people will leave the car there all day vs getting a 4hr charge and having someone else take the spot for another 4 hours.

Yeppp, ça c'est un esti de fléau,
souvent le matin a 8:00 a keks part dans le centre ville ou les alentours je vois un char sur la charge,
je repasse le soir a 4:30 et il est encore la, ça arrive tres tres tres souvent que j'en vois des comme ça.

Beaucoup de morons ce servent des bornes de recharge comme un spot de parking pour la journée pour leur char électrique ...
 
The issue with adding more charging stations is the same problem that parking lots face. They are a waste of space. If only most of North American wasn't so damn dead set against proper public transit.. Then again its easy when you have this boondoggle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail

Yeah, chargers definitely requires significant real estate and they're a waste of space when they're not in use. you can't shake a magic wand and have these pop up in an already built up area and be as closely integrated /quick as gas stations along the route.

Mid-long distance travel is a use case for electrical cars that shows the serious limitations of the "I take MY own car everywhere" North American transportation model.
 
Yeppp, ça c'est un esti de fléau,
souvent le matin a 8:00 a keks part dans le centre ville ou les alentours je vois un char sur la charge,
je repasse le soir a 4:30 et il est encore la, ça arrive tres tres tres souvent que j'en vois des comme ça.

Beaucoup de morons ce servent des bornes de recharge comme un spot de parking pour la journée pour leur char électrique ...

Les spots de recharge downtown ont aussi un parcomètre normalement pour éviter le problème.
 
Yeah, chargers definitely requires significant real estate and they're a waste of space when they're not in use. you can't shake a magic wand and have these pop up in an already built up area and be as closely integrated /quick as gas stations along the route.

Mid-long distance travel is a use case for electrical cars that shows the serious limitations of the "I take MY own car everywhere" North American transportation model.

Gas stations in cities are becoming fewer and fewer. The Realestate they occupy is worth more. The Esso on De La Montagne for example, next will be the Esso on Atwater/St Jacques and St Laurent/Sherbrooke. I believe we are at the end of new stations ever being built in a downtown core unless it was a mixed use retail/ charging platform.

The sweet spot is that 350-450mi range of a tank and lets say roughly 4-6hours of endurance. If you can get that max endurance from an EV on that trip you solve the charging station problem as you can just plug in at destination. I know my gas car can do Montreal- Barrie Ontario on one tank at 120kph, gas light on yes but still got there. There is nothing wrong with taking your own car but I would sure love to jump on a train and do that same journey in half the time but as it stands the general public can't accept that public transit for the most part will always lose money or just break evenish. You get Post Media etc writing bullshit articles slamming public transit and then Joe and Karen Boomer bitching that REM doesn't have parking and no high speed train through the corn field.
 
Gas stations in cities are becoming fewer and fewer. The Realestate they occupy is worth more. The Esso on De La Montagne for example, next will be the Esso on Atwater/St Jacques and St Laurent/Sherbrooke. I believe we are at the end of new stations ever being built in a downtown core unless it was a mixed use retail/ charging platform.

The sweet spot is that 350-450mi range of a tank and lets say roughly 4-6hours of endurance. If you can get that max endurance from an EV on that trip you solve the charging station problem as you can just plug in at destination. I know my gas car can do Montreal- Barrie Ontario on one tank at 120kph, gas light on yes but still got there. There is nothing wrong with taking your own car but I would sure love to jump on a train and do that same journey in half the time but as it stands the general public can't accept that public transit for the most part will always lose money or just break evenish. You get Post Media etc writing bullshit articles slamming public transit and then Joe and Karen Boomer bitching that REM doesn't have parking and no high speed train through the corn field.

That's true for gas stations moving away from the downtown cores. On one hand, you don't need a big footprint to service a (comparatively) large number of vehicles per hour (vs EVs) but then again the margins are too small on gasoline to make it work. Factor in that taxes are cheaper outside of the cities and the shift towards integrating gas stations with other stops along the way. Ie groceries and gas station.

Malls and retail businesses are the ones that stand the most to benefit from greatly expanding the EV charging infrastructure. They have lots of square footage that isn't all that busy at times and a shot at a captive audience for a 20-40 min window in which they might make a purchase vs online buying.

We're fast approaching the point of diminishing return on EV range. I've averaged 27km a day for the past 6 months (5000km -including trips and what not) I don't see why I would need a 700km EV range on my daily driver. All this adds is cost, weight and complexity to address a make believe need. Even when my use case was different, 100km of range on my previous PHEV covered 90% of my daily driving needs.
 
There is no money in selling actual fuel retail... thats why the big companies got out of running their own stations for the most part. The money is in selling that bottle of coke for 3$... I'm unsure about the diminishing returns on EVs in the endurance regard. Unless there is some massive shift to an integrated EV network and public transit which I highly doubt people will still want that distance of an ICE car because it's there. Would I take a Model 3 with 250km range for 10-12k less? Hard to say, that extra range is worth it now. In 10-15 years? Likely not. I do 100% get your point though. As it stands a Golf E won't do allez retour Vaudreuil to Dorval in the winter, sitting outside all day without a 20-30 min charge.

On the subject of malls. They are slowly reinventing into "giant food hubs"...
 
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I think gas stations will need more supple regulations to survive downtown, taxis and other services still need them. Right now you need maybe 10-15k square feet in an open area and afterwards the land is VGA. In Paris they can almost operate a gas pump on the sidewalk like we do here for EV stations (according to google images, I don't really recall seing those).

There is no money in selling actual fuel retail... thats why the big companies got out of running their own stations for the most part. The money is in selling that bottle of coke for 3$... I'm unsure about the diminishing returns on EVs in the endurance regard. Unless there is some massive shift to an integrated EV network and public transit which I highly doubt people will still want that distance of an ICE car because it's there. Would I take a Model 3 with 250km range for 10-12k less? Hard to say, that extra range is worth it now. In 10-15 years? Likely not. I do 100% get your point though. As it stands a Golf E won't do allez retour Vaudreuil to Dorval in the winter, sitting outside all day without a 20-30 min charge.

On the subject of malls. They are slowly reinventing into "giant food hubs"...

Most potential buyers for an EV are suburbans with 2 cars. Last time I checked, more EVs were sold in Montérégie than in Montreal. So, as a second car, even 150km real world is enough. There is no point in having 500km for everybody. There were studies done in the early 90s. They proposed 80, 120 and 240km range or something like that to a group of consumers to try EVs during a couple of weeks. Most consumers instinctively answered they needed 3-400 miles (whatever their gas tank could cover) before trying, and after the trial period, many found that 120km was enough and they didn't even need the 240km range, and charging overnight was more convinient than going to the gas station.
 
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The EV dream will die at the same rate baby boomers die.

The electric motor (1837) was invented before the combustion engine (1859).

The first electric car was released in 1891.

As if this is NEW technology!

Elon Musk is simply a great snake oil salesman. James Cameron did the same thing with 3D and Avatar.

I have to give it to Musk, he was great at convincing the world he was the resurrection of Nikola Tesla.

meh... I don't like Musk but god damn the cars do actually work. Doesn't matter when the basic design of the motor was invented the Model 3 is truly a gem
 
I think gas stations will need more supple regulations to survive downtown, taxis and other services still need them. Right now you need maybe 10-15k square feet in an open area and afterwards the land is VGA. In Paris they can almost operate a gas pump on the sidewalk like we do here for EV stations (according to google images, I don't really recall seing those).

They are in many countries on the curb.

This is yesterday in Geneva... It even has a car wash.

Takes 10 feet tall, and the first floor of a small car park.
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The extra range needed is to remove the additional hassle of having to connect and unplug every 2 days. Altough it doesn’t look like much added effort it still adds a recurring task and when you’re in the morning rush to get to work, drop kids at daycare/school you really don’t beed additional tasks.... so yeah if i can plug it inly once a week or every 10 days i would get that super long extended range
 
The extra range needed is to remove the additional hassle of having to connect and unplug every 2 days. Altough it doesn’t look like much added effort it still adds a recurring task and when you’re in the morning rush to get to work, drop kids at daycare/school you really don’t beed additional tasks.... so yeah if i can plug it inly once a week or every 10 days i would get that super long extended range
That's exactly it.

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